If you missed Part-1 of our post on getting started with Underwater Wide-Angle Photography- Click Here
Composing a Wide Angle Shot Underwater
There are a hundreds and thousands of photographs you see, where the subject blends into the background also known as negative space, and they simply fail to grab your attention. This often occurs when shooting down on a subject. If you are aware of this problem when composing an image there are various ways to make a subject stand out or “pop”.
The first is to – Get Low, Get Close and Shoot Up! You’ve probably heard it tons of times and read it in every write up about any kind of underwater photography, that it’s important to get as close to the subject as possible
and take the shot either in-line with the subject or from below but not from above. This helps avoid that “blue diffusion filter” of water and capture the true colors of the subject while adding some perspective and depth to the image. In wide angle shots, being below the subject and shooting at an upward angle will put blue water in the background, which is almost always better.
Another way of getting that successful image where the subject stands out, involves creating a contrast between the subject and its background or negative space. You can do this by capturing your subject against a completely different color background, like the blue we mentioned above or a black background, which can be easily created by shooting with a small aperture and fast shutter speed. Or, by shooting upwards you can accentuate an interesting subject by capturing it’s silhouette to create contrast. However, remember this only works when you can see a silhouette, because you you cannot shoot a silhouette if you cannot see it. And to capture a silhouette you need no strobe lighting.
Other Underwater Wide Angle Photography Tips-
- When shooting portraits of divers in wide angle, such as a diver with fish or coral behind him/her—the best shooting distance is from 0.8 to 1.5 meters. At this range the flash will be stronger than the ambient light to produce a nice deep blue background.
Wide angle doesn’t mean the picture has to be horizontal. Take into consideration the subject and think to see if a vertical composition may be better.- In underwater photography while the subject is important, it’s crucial to pay more attention to the background to make your subject pop. Particularly in underwater wide-angle photography you should consider looking for a great backdrop for an image and then search for a subject within that area rather than vice-versa.
- Use the rule of thirds where there is a one-third/two third ratio between background and subject. This means one third is black or blue water background and two thirds is subject.
- What ever underwater camera and equipment you’re using doesn’t really change any of these techniques we’ve mentioned here. So work on your techniques rather before you start dropping big bucks on big underwater photography rigs.
*Photo Credits: photos by Sunphol Sorakul, motleypixel, doug.deep and Solanaboy on flickr
